Books by modern authors fascinate many readers. In them, writers show their attitude to life, love, friendship, and moral values in a new way. One of these works is the novel “Love Lives for Three Years” by Frederic Beigbeder. Quotes from the book are of interest to many modern readers, especially young people. Ten years ago this book was being shouted at every corner. Today, many have not only read it, but also watched the film adaptation. We invite you to familiarize yourself with the main storylines and quotes from the book “Love Lives for Three Years.”
Author of the novel “Love Lives for Three Years”
The author of the small novel, consisting of 192 pages, is the modern French writer of journalistic, critical articles, editor and prose writer Frederic Beigbeder. The writer was only 53 years old. He comes from the small town of Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris.
For some time, Frederick worked as a copywriter in an advertising agency. He then became a literary critic for some magazines and radio programs. Later he had his own television show, “Books and Me.” Deserved fame came to Beigbeder after the release of five novels. The book “99 Francs” became the best-selling book in the early 2000s in France. Now let's move on to a more detailed discussion of the content and quotes from the book “Love Lives for Three Years.”
Quotes from Love lasts three years
Happy love is just a myth.
The most difficult age is thirty years. You are too old to be young, and too young to be called an old man.
Weaknesses are the real attraction.
There is not a drop of life left in me. Waking up in the morning, I am burning with the desire to fall back into sleep. I wear black clothes, which is a kind of mourning in its essence. Mourning for the person I longed to become but could not.
The beauty of our love lies in its impossibility.
I need to confess my love to my misfortune, otherwise relapses cannot be avoided.
Love does not always provide an alternative: to suffer, or to make one suffer. It often happens that these two actions are intertwined into one whole.
How incomprehensible love can be. You cannot understand its essence when you watch how others love, and even more so you don’t understand anything about love when you yourself find yourself in its network.
He tries his best to maintain his reputation: God forbid that anyone should be disappointed in him.
What is striking is not that our life is like an act of a play, but that so few people are involved in this play.
The difficulty of my task is that you are the solution.
Read the continuation of the best aphorisms and quotes on the pages:
For three years that love lives that did not storm the peaks and did not go to the bottom, but fell from the sky ready-made.
We are used to receiving everything without giving anything.
Today those who have money do not have time, and those who have time do not have money.
Exotic, aesthetic, erotic, spermatic.
There is a lot of sadness in this world, but it’s hard to imagine a sadness worse than the one that falls on a woman when she feels love leaving - oh no, not overnight, slowly, but uncontrollably, flowing away like sand in an hourglass.
Passion cannot be “institutional”, boredom must be the norm, and passion must be the cherry on the cake.
You have to choose: either you live with someone, or you want this someone. You can’t want what you have, it’s unnatural.
The best thing you can do at a funeral is fall in love.
I can’t turn my fate around; it’s not made from the kind of dough that’s easy to mold.
Because when you make someone else suffer, you do the worst thing to yourself.
In the second year they say: If you leave, it will hurt me, but I will survive. In the third year they say: If you leave, I will wash it with champagne.
What is the novel about?
Frederic Beigbeder dedicated his work to the well-known theory proving that falling in love is associated with certain hormones (the writer writes about dopamine). The feeling of falling in love passes because brain function returns to normal, its normal rhythm returns, and hormones no longer stimulate the emotional dependence of lovers on each other. It is believed that strong emotional subordination to each other disappears in three years. The main character of the novel suffers over this theory, trying to refute it. Frederic Beigbeder popularized the theory that love relationships are inherently doomed.
The author conceived the novel to describe love in very simple words. The vocabulary of the book contains original words, advertising slogans, and interesting phrases, so quotes from the book “Love Lives for Three Years” are remembered by many admirers of the writer’s work. In the late 90s, it was fashionable to describe intimate scenes, interspersing them with philosophical statements.
Love lasts three years - Quotes
( "Love lives for three years")
“Love Lives for Three Years” (French: L'amour dure trois ans) is a 1997 novel by Frederic Beigbeder.
Love is a battle. Lost in advance. The more you want to get carried away, the greater the disappointment when it all ends. No, you must strive to be bored, then you will be pleasantly surprised if it suddenly turns out that you have not yet burst into tears. Passion cannot be “institutional”, boredom must be the norm, and passion must be the icing on the cake. I am a dead person. I wake up in the morning, and I have an unbearable desire for one thing - to sleep. I dress in black: I mourn for myself. Mourning for the person I did not become. I am probably the saddest person I have met in my life. There are nights when sleep is an unaffordable luxury. Sleeping in order to wake up from a bad dream. So that none of this would happen at all. I want to erase my own life. Because when you make another suffer, you do the worst thing to yourself. About Great Love - yes, with its ups and downs, they would, of course, dream about it, otherwise why live? The only question in love is this: when do we begin lie? Love ends when you can't go back. Suicides are truly obnoxious people. In the first year they buy furniture. In the second year, the furniture is rearranged. In the third year, the furniture is divided. Even if I know that love is a fairy tale, I will still probably be proud in a few years that I believed in it. For a long time, the only goal of my life was self-destruction. And then I suddenly wanted happiness. This is terrible, I’m burning with shame, forgive me: I once succumbed to the most vulgar temptation to be happy. One thing I had yet to learn: this was precisely the best way to self-destruct. People die of love every day - and all because of “extramarital affairs.” Love is an intoxicating catastrophe: you know that you are running straight into the wall, and yet step on the gas; you fly towards your death with a smile on your lips; you wait with curiosity for the moment when it explodes. Love is the only programmed disappointment, the only predictable misfortune that you want more of. The strongest love is unrequited. I would prefer never to know this, but this is the truth: there is nothing worse than loving someone who does not love you - and at the same time, nothing more beautiful than this has ever happened to me in my life. Loving someone who loves you is narcissism. Loving someone who doesn’t love you - that’s it, that’s love. The key problem of love, it seems to me, is this: to be happy, a person needs confidence in the future, and to be in love, one needs precisely uncertainty. Happiness is based on peace, while love requires doubts and worries. In general, marriage was intended for happiness, but not for love. And falling in love is not the best way to become happy, if it were so, everyone would have known it long ago. There is no such thing as happy love. There is a lot of sadness in this world, but it’s hard to imagine a sadness worse than the one that falls on a woman when she feels herself leaving love - oh no, not overnight, slowly but uncontrollably, flows away like sand in an hourglass. A woman needs the admiration of a man to blossom... Start from scratch. A blank sheet promises so much... Someone will say that this attraction is superficial - it’s not true, there is nothing deeper; you are ready for anything; you put up with shortcomings, forgive imperfections, even look for them, never tired of admiring them. After all, only weaknesses are truly attractive. Believe me: I tried everything, just not to fall in love. Put yourself in my place: if you burn yourself with milk, you will be afraid of scalding yourself. Here is the simplest test for falling in love: if, after spending four or five hours without your lover, you begin to miss her, then you are not in love - otherwise ten minutes of separation would be enough , so that your life becomes absolutely unbearable. All beauty degenerates into ugliness, the destiny of youth is to fade, our lives are slow decay, we die every day. In the 20th century, love is a telephone that does not ring. A book about those who should not suffer from a breakup that took place on their initiative, but they still suffer - all the more hopelessly because they themselves are to blame for everything and know it. Love is not only an alternative: you suffer or make them suffer. It may well be both. Nobody wants to be alone: it frees up too much time for thinking. And the more you think, the smarter you become - and therefore the sadder. We were rushing towards the abyss and didn’t even think about slowing down. I did not yet know that the idiot who presses the pedal too late is me. We live on Earth to experience the same events as our parents, in the same sequence - and in the same way they did the same things before us mistakes that their parents made, and so on ad infinitum. But that's not the worst thing. It’s worse when you yourself regularly get into the same shit. To love my misfortune, because it is generous with relapses. Men are like stews, you need to make them well. The best way not to regret something is to try to forget it. Death there are more surprises in store for us than life. The most notorious cynics and pessimists fall in love the most: this is to their benefit. It is precisely those who need it most who deny love: in every Valmont there is hidden an incorrigible romantic, whom you don’t feed with bread, give strum the mandolin. Those who are afraid of death are incurious. My problem is that you are its solution. Without you, my life is a waiting room. The state of falling in love: pain in the stomach, the only cure for which is you. I can’t turn it around fate, it is not made from the kind of dough that is easy to mold. I watch a fly hitting the window of my room, and I think that it is just like me: there is glass between it and reality. A double life is a luxury for schizos. It’s all over. V. S. E. K. O. N. C. E. N. O. It’s crazy: I wrote these ten letters so easily, but I’m not able to accept their meaning. Writing means complaining. We are left to ourselves and are not able to become interested in anything other than our own navel. We first leave our parents’ nest, and then, sometimes, our first family nest too, and we always feel the same pain, because we feel forever orphaned. Revenge - an inedible dish. We have no right to refuse happiness. Speed prevents us from being ourselves. The slacker is public enemy number one. Breathing air is a full-time job, it would always be like this. I am a hermit smiling at the warm breeze. Happiness is such a monstrous thing , that if you yourself don’t burst from it, then it will require at least a couple of murders from you. Love is the only thing worth living for... For love to live forever, it is enough to forget about time. It is the modern world that kills love. History of literature - a long chain of betrayals. I will never be able to give so much to anyone. I am afraid of myself... We build walls to protect ourselves, and these very walls will someday become a prison. It turns out that you can be sad for the present. We must try not to forget these minutes, so that there is something to remember when everything gets bad. In order for love not to pass, there must be something elusive in everyone... Avoiding blandness - no, this does not mean spurring yourself on with artificially created stupid shocks, you just need to be able to be surprised by the miracle of every day. That love lives for three years that did not storm the peaks and did not go to the bottom, but fell from the sky ready-made. I learned the main thing - in order to become happy, you must experience a state of terrible unhappiness. Love lives long only if each of the lovers knows its value, and It’s better to pay in advance, otherwise they will present the bill a posteriori. We were not ready for happiness, because we were not accustomed to unhappiness... After all, we were raised in the worship of one god - well-being. You need to know who you are and who you love. You need to complete yourself, to live an unfinished story. To love someone, you must first love yourself. The countdown is the beginning... The amazing thing about this life is that it continues. Marriage is caviar for breakfast, lunch and dinner: with what you adore, You can also eat yourself to the point of nausea. “Please, a little more! What? Can't do it anymore? But just recently you liked it so much that it happened to you? Come on, eat, you ugly boy!” There is happiness, it’s as simple as that: it’s someone’s face. They console themselves with the illusion of their own importance, saying hello to celebrities, although they themselves haven’t done a damn thing in life. They try to hang out only where it’s noisy , - you don’t have to talk. I thought I was looking for love, until one fine day I realized that I wanted the exact opposite - to stay away from her. Thirty is the intermediate age when you are too old to be young, and too young, to be old. He does everything to be like his reputation: God forbid he disappoints anyone. He tried so hard to expand his track record that he turned into a caricature of himself. In the first year they say: “If you leave, I WILL FINISH with myself". In the second year they say: “If you leave, it will hurt me, but I will survive.” In the third year they say: “If you leave, I will wash it with champagne.” This whole love scam is built on the strictest observance of secrecy. You are told that this is for life, but in fact, love chemically ceases to exist after three years. Society is leading you by the nose: they sell you great love, when in fact it has been scientifically proven that these hormones only act for three years. Over time. love passes. Lyrics would be nice, you can argue with poets, but you can’t argue against natural sciences and demography. To truly fall in love, I’m too jaded; to remain indifferent, I am too sensitive. I was an incorrigible waster of life, a pure product of our society of useless luxury. The truth is always ugly, that’s why everyone lies. They pity the sufferers, but not the tormentors. The most important problem in life is the suffering you cause, and the most sophisticated philosophy cannot justify a person who tormented the heart that loved him. When you make another suffer, you do the worst thing to yourself. When you have everything at once, sooner or later you begin to expect a catastrophe as a deliverance. If women were more cunning, they would not fall into the hands of to make you run after them all your life. Love is the only programmed disappointment, the only predictable misfortune that you want more of. It is like an ostrich: it is poorly tamed and hides as soon as it senses danger. The best thing you can do at a funeral is fall in love. An angelic face on the body harlots. The girl is a lightning rod: if love at first sight is a lightning strike, then she attracted her. You have to choose: either you live with someone, or you desire this someone. You can’t want what you have, it’s unnatural. All my troubles come from a childish inability to calm down in the craving for novelty, from a painful need to be eternally seduced by a thousand incredible opportunities prepared by the future. It’s crazy how much what I don’t know yet excites me more than what I already know. The key problem of love is this: to be happy, a person needs confidence in the future, and to be in love, one needs uncertainty. Happiness is based on tranquility, while love needs doubts and worries. The best holidays are those that happen within us. A high-voltage electric field - tangible, flickering - that suddenly arises between a man and a woman who are not even acquainted, for no apparent reason, just like that, everything - simply because they liked each other and are trying their best not to give themselves away. No words needed. It's all about facial expressions, poses. It's like a riddle...Only weaknesses are truly attractive. The most beautiful woman is a healthy woman. The most reliable test is a swimming pool. By the pool it is clear who is who: an intellectual will bury her face in a book in a bathing cap, an athlete will arrange a water polo match, those prone to narcissism will take care of tanning, those prone to hypochondria will apply protective cream... If a woman by the pool is afraid to get her hair wet so as not to ruin her hair, - run away. If she jumps into the water with laughter, jump after her. You consider yourself irreplaceable, and you are replaced in no time. All beauty degenerates into ugliness, the destiny of youth is to fade, our life is a slow decay, we die every day. We are used to receiving everything, nothing giving. Exotic, aesthetic, erotic, spermatic. Sex is a big lottery: two people can love it separately and not get a thrill together. She looks at sex not as a duty, but as a game: the game has rules, you need to know them, to play, but this does not mean that they cannot be changed. For her, there are no taboos, she wants to try everything. If a bed story can become a love story, then the opposite case is very rare. Free and no one’s. Loneliness has become some kind of shameful disease. Why is everyone so shy of him? Yes, because it makes you think. Today Descartes would not have written: “I think, therefore I exist.” He would say: “I am alone, therefore I exist.” Nobody wants to be alone: it frees up too much time for thinking. And the more you think, the smarter you become - and therefore the sadder. Love is an incomprehensible thing. When you see it in others, you understand nothing, and even less when it happens to you. Our love is beautiful because it is impossible. When you live a double life, there is a golden rule: do not fall in love. You can meet secretly - for pleasure, for variety, for the thrill of sensations. You feel like a hero without really straining yourself. But under no circumstances should there be any feelings! You can't lump everything into one pile. Otherwise you will end up confusing pleasure with love. And you risk getting stuck tightly. I can’t even understand why people are so killed when they die. Death has more surprises in store for us than life. I now look forward to the day of my death. I will be happy to leave this world and finally find out what happens next. Those who are afraid of death are incurious. The most notorious cynics and pessimists fall in love the most. My cynicism was just waiting to be refuted by life. It is precisely those who need it most who deny love. If I am banal, that means I am all-human... The society in which we were born is based on selfishness. Sociologists call this individualism, although there is a simpler explanation: we live in a society of loneliness. Spouses have dinner, lovers have breakfast. It’s not surprising that our life is a play, but that there are so few characters in it. Today, who has money , those do not have time, and those who have time do not have money. It is foolish to desire an unshakable life. We want time to stop, so that love is eternal and nothing ever fades away - we want to bask in a golden childhood all our lives. We build walls to protect ourselves, and these same walls will one day become a prison. You are definitely in love when you start squeezing toothpaste onto another brush that is not yours. To become happy, you must experience a state of unhappiness. If you do not go through the school of grief, happiness cannot be lasting. That love lives for three years that did not storm the peaks, did not go to the bottom, but fell from the sky ready-made. Love lives long only if each of those who love knows its value. We were not prepared for happiness because we were not accustomed to unhappiness. After all, we were raised in the worship of one God - well-being. You need to know who you are and who you love. You have to complete yourself in order to live an unfinished story. Marriage is a crime because it kills the mystery. You meet a fairy-tale creature, marry him, and suddenly it turns out that the fairy-tale creature has disappeared somewhere - now it is your wife. Your wife! What an outrage, what degradation for her! But you have to search, search tirelessly all your life, for a woman who will never be yours!
The storyline of Beigbeder's book
The main character of the novel is Marc Marronier, who works as a journalist. He is a gossip columnist. Mark has a theory in his head that love lasts only three years: first, passion arises between people, then tender friendship, and then indifference and boredom. Mark developed such views on love because he himself was unable to maintain fiery feelings for more than three years. His wife was a beautiful girl, Anna, but after three years she became disgusting to him. This led to Mark falling in love with Alice.
She also developed feelings for him, only the girl lived with another man and came on dates secretly. Mark constantly counts down time and waits for the allotted three years to pass, afraid of losing love again. Is there really a break between him and Alice? Fear comes over the hero on the eve of the third anniversary of their relationship. But love turned out to be alive. Mark concludes that this theory is far-fetched and stupid, it is important to find your person.
Perception of Beigbeder's creation by contemporaries
Many readers really like the novel by the French writer, while others do not find anything useful in it for themselves. Still others see it as an unsolvable mystery. However, the book is a treasure trove of quotes. Beigbeder has his own style, which is suitable for reading on the beach or in free moments of office work.
The French film “Love Lives for Three Years” was adapted from the work of the same name by Frederic Beigbeder. The premiere took place in European countries in 2011, and in Russia in 2012. The main character was played by actor Gaspard Proust, Alice - Louise Bourgoin.
Frederic Beigbeder about why love lasts three years
One of the most controversial texts about love from the main romantic egoist of modern France.
Love is a battle. Lost in advance. Secular people are generally loners, lost in a sea of vaguely familiar faces. They try to be only where it is noisy - you don’t have to talk. Holidays are given to a person to hide what is on his mind. How did I allow window dressing to crush my life to such an extent? They often say: “We need to save face.” And I say, you have to kill the face, that’s the only way you’ll save yourself.
A mosquito has an eyelid of one day, a rose has three. A cat's age is thirteen years, love's age is three years. And there's nothing you can do about it. First a year of passion, then a year of tenderness and, finally, a year of boredom.
In the first year they say, “If you leave, I WILL commit suicide.” In the second year they say: “If you leave, it will hurt me, but I will survive.” In the third year they say: “If you leave, I will wash it with champagne.”
Three years! Statistics, biochemistry, my personal experience: the term of love is the same. I don't like such coincidences. Why three years, and not two, not four or, say, six hundred? In my opinion, this confirms the existence of three stages that Stendhal, Barthes and Barbara Cartland repeatedly identified: Passion Tenderness Boredom, a cycle of three stages, each a year long - a triad, unshakable, like the Holy Trinity. In the first year they buy furniture. In the second year, the furniture is rearranged. In the third year, the furniture is divided.
Love is a delightful catastrophe: you know that you are heading straight for the wall, and yet you step on the gas; you fly towards your death with a smile on your lips; you wait with curiosity for the moment when it explodes. Love is the only programmed disappointment, the only predictable misfortune that you want more of. Love is a strange thing. When you see it in others, you understand nothing, and even less when it happens to you. For love to live forever, it is enough to forget about time. I understood one thing: for love not to pass away, there must be something elusive in everyone. Avoiding insipidity - no, this does not mean spurring yourself on with artificially created stupid shocks, you just need to be able to be surprised by the miracle of every day. Be generous and don't split hairs. You're definitely in love when you start squeezing toothpaste onto a brush that's not yours.
I learned the main thing - to become happy, you need to experience a state of terrible unhappiness. If you do not go through the school of grief, happiness cannot be lasting. For three years that love lives that did not storm the peaks and did not go to the bottom, but fell from the sky ready-made.
Love lasts long only if each of those who love knows its value. We were not prepared for happiness because we were not accustomed to unhappiness. After all, we were raised in the worship of one god - well-being. You have to complete yourself in order to live an unfinished story.
Author: Frederic Beigbeder
The best quotes from the book “Love Lives for Three Years” by Frederic Beigbeder
The novel is narrated from the perspective of the main character, Mark. It is he who philosophizes about life, relationships and his perception of the world. At first he was so bored with family life that he said:
If only someone could tell me what I want.
The good news for Mark was that love makes you lose weight.
This diet is not advertised by anyone, but it is more effective than many others. If you want to lose weight, then choose depression for this purpose. You need to get a divorce, fall in love with someone who does not share your feelings and be sad from morning to evening. This will make your body slim.
To his beloved Alice, Mark says the following phrase:
Under any circumstances, I will be next to you, on the same planet, and will wait for you.
Here are his famous words:
Love is associated with a short-term increase in the levels of dopamine, prolactin, norepinephrine, luliberin, and oxytocin.
